(e.g. if you don't put the brakes on in your car and it starts to roll and crashes into something).

Wrong analogy. Unlike the car, the router by itself wouldn't cause any damage. *Someone* committed a crime, they should prosecute that guy.

Unless you're an idiot, you already have these things for your home network.

Then I guess I'm an idiot for being a nice guy and providing free access for people passing by. Why am I an idiot? My traffic is secure (I have two networks, one encrypted with WPA2-Enterprise with a RADIUS server, another open) and I have no traffic limits. Why shouldn't I share?

I have no clue about the legal matter. However, if you're going to use your own code for employment, perhaps you should have taken a snapshot of it, and forked it?

Basically, whatever progress you did from the beginning belongs to the company while being paid on the clock. Your original code prior to employment belongs to you. But I seriously doubt you can go back and implement their code or process back into your original pre-fork code.

BP also has a track record of cutting every corner, which obviously led to the current problem,

Um, no. We still have no idea what happened, or why none of the several failsafes on the blowout preventer worked.

While BP are legally liable, it's entirely possible that Halliburton (who were pouring a concrete casing around the well at the time of the accident) could be to blame.

Although BP deserve to be dragged over the coals for the failure of the platform, and perhaps for not responding in a timely manner, pointing blame for the failure of the BOP is a much more complicated issue, given that such a complete failure shouldn't have been possible. We simply need more facts.

I liked my prior workplace, where I had a standard cubicle (one with a lot of space though, not one of these "compressed" ones), surrounded by other cubicles with my teammates. I had some privacy, I didn't have people walking right up behind me like I do now, and when conversations did happen, the high cubicle walls kept the conversation from being too distracting (and kept me from having direct sight of all the people standing around), while still allowing me to hear if it was something I wanted to participate in.

Comparing nerve weapons and nuclear weapons is apples and oranges for specificity. Nerve weapons target the population specifically, nuclear weapons are really big bombs, mostly good for decimation, but not killing the population, sure they do it well enough, but the majority of the damage is structural, and the radiation is mostly an unwanted side effect, not a directly desired effect except to make a statement.

With VX you can walk in and plant your flag in the middle of a still functional manufacturing district or city, with nuclear weapons, sure you burned the hell out of the populace that survived, but the power is in the big ruin you've just turned the local 5-50 mile radius into and you just cant wait to see their reactions when their city is a crater.

How is his statement wrong? You're not even contradicting it. You're talking about copying and selling something, which is exactly what copyright is about: the right to copy.

What this case about isn't copying at all: it's about buying a legitimate item from the publisher (through its distributor and retailer), then taking it somewhere else and reselling it as second-hand. Normally, publishers don't complain too loudly about this, because there's no profit in buying a CD at Wal-Mart and then driving to your local used CD store and selling it there. However, with global travel, there is profit in buying a perfectly legitimate DVD in China (not one of the counterfeit ones), flying home to the USA, and selling it on Ebay there, since the publisher sets wildly different prices in the two regions.

Basically, the copyright cartel wants to redefine copyright to overturn the right of first sale, which has existed for centuries.

In 1790, if someone was stupid enough to sell a book for 25 cents in Philadelphia and 10 cents in Atlanta, they wouldn't have been able to bring any real legal action against someone who bought up all the books in Atlanta and resold them in Philly for 15 cents; it would have been thrown out of court right away.

If aliens come here from those star systems light years away,they figured out the energy problem. They are not going towant to take over our coal mines and natural gas deposits.I assume they have much better energy sources. I do not knowanything else (as resource) that would not be found on other(uninhabited) planets than the fossil fuels.

Of course that still leaves the possibility that they justwant the living space (oceans greens etc.) and/or would see usas food as delicacy. (Maybe the better meaning majority wouldmake laws to declare us endangered, like we do with the whales,but some would still hunt us for fun/profit.

But if colonization is what drives the aliens, then they wouldsurely find planets that can serve for that purpose withoutintelligent life and much closer to their origins. (There arebillions of systems etc.) Why would they want Earth with anecosystem damaged and being damaged by humanity? I just assumethey would much rather have a clean planet...

The only issue I can see is if we are competition to these alienscolonization efforts of other planets. But we are not there yet,and when we get there, hopefully we will be able to protectourselves.

But, it is an interesting question to ponder: Assume we were on ourway to colonize other planets and got near to some prospectiveone. We notice that there is life there and may be intelligent(say on the level of the Neandertales which is what we would appearto aliens today I assume). What would we do? Keep lookingfurther (cost) or eradicate them or enslave them (less cost, highmoral cost)? Now go see Pocahontas or Avatar!!